CuriousAg said:
2.3 million boomer businesses currently. 70% don't have a succession plan in place.
How do I take over one/many of these businesses? What is the best place to find them? (BuyBizSell, Loopnet?)
What niche would you look into?
What are your goals?
For what it's worth, I think there are three kinds of these businesses out there.
You've got your high asset/low employee/high customer count businesses. This is the "boring businesses" stuff that a lot of Instagram gurus talk about. Laundromats, RV and mobile home parks, storage facilities. I have no experience with these. I personally wonder if selling courses teaching people how to do it is more lucrative than actually doing it.
Then you've got one man bands. As others have said, you probably need the necessary skills to deliver that service to take that over.
And then there's lifestyle businesses. They've been grown TO A POINT. Then the owner got happy and didn't want the next level of problems so they just put it on cruise control. Very common that the business NEEDS the owner to function. Often it's sales. Usually also includes a bunch of business admin stuff like payroll, banking, taxes, 401(k), insurance, IT, HR, etc.
What you're signing up for there is one of two things: you keep on trucking as the previous person did (and do the same five jobs they were doing and are linchpinned like they were). Or you decide to clean it up and grow it to make it more profitable (eventually) and maybe sell it to someone else someday.
Plenty of folks out there that can help you find a good lifestyle business. There are some brokers on TexAgs that hang out on this forum. The challenge is the price. The owner of the lifestyle business always thinks it's worth more than it is.
I bought a lifestyle business four years and seven days ago. If you've got questions I can share what I've learned.
But big question is WHAT IS YOUR GOAL? Also, be advised that passive income is a myth.